Description
A diplomatic and cultural history, America's Miracle Man in Vietnam draws on government archives, presidential libraries, private papers, novels, newspapers, magazines, movies, and television and radio broadcasts. Jacobs shows in detail how, in the 1950s, U.S. policymakers conceived of Cold War anticommunism as a crusade in which Americans needed to combine with fellow Judeo-Christians against an adversary dangerous as much for its atheism as for its military might. He describes how racist assumptions that Asians were culturally unready for democratic self-government predisposed Americans to excuse Diem's dictatorship as necessary in "the Orient." By focusing attention on the role of American religious and racial ideologies, Jacobs makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the disastrous commitment of the United States to "sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem."
Argues that American cultural conceptions of religion and race during the 1950s played a crucial role in framing an ideology through which U.S. policymakers understood their options in Vietnam.
About the Author
Seth Jacobs is Assistant Professor of History at Boston College.
Reviews
"Seth Jacobs makes a seminal contribution to the study of the origins of American involvement in Vietnam. Combining prodigious research in a rich variety of primary sources, a sophisticated conceptual framework that illuminates the intersection of high politics and popular culture, and an especially engaging writing style, Jacobs fundamentally recasts how we view this critical period in the history of the Vietnam wars and the Cold War."-Mark Bradley, author of Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919-1950
"Seth Jacobs's interesting and provocative argument adds a new interpretation to the massive literature on the United States and the path toward full deployment in Vietnam. Jacobs writes with a lively, punchy style that makes his work both entertaining and instructive."-Michael Latham, author of Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and 'Nation Building' in the Kennedy Era
Book Information
ISBN 9780822334408
Author Seth Jacobs
Format Paperback
Page Count 392
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 544g